24 reasons ISIS are wrong: Muslim scholars blast Islamic State

A large group of Islamic theologians addressed the head of the Islamic State in an open letter, articulately accusing the movement of practices that have nothing to do with Islam, even rejecting the extremists’ right to call themselves jihadists.

Over a hundred Muslim scholars and clergymen from all over the
world have released on Wednesday an address to Islamic State (IS,
formerly ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, accusing the
self-proclaimed caliph and his army of heinous war crimes and
violation of fundamental principles of Islam, illiterate use of
Islamic scripture torn from the context and perversion of the
rules of morality and Sharia law.

“Who gave you authority over the ummah [Muslim people]?”
the letter questions. “Was it your group? If this is the
case, then a group of no more than several thousand has appointed
itself the ruler of over a billion-and-a-half Muslims. This
attitude is based upon a corrupt circular logic that says: ‘Only
we are Muslims, and we decide who the caliph is, we have chosen
one and so whoever does not accept our caliph is not a
Muslim,’” the document said.

The letter has been published in two languages, Arabic and English, on a specially-created website. Though the
document goes into in-depth analyses of the nuances and exegesis
of Islamic texts, the general message is combined on the very
first page of the address, outlined in 24 essentials downtrodden by the militants of the Islamic State -
according to the authors of the letter.

The absolute majority of the essentials detailed in the letter –
20 out of 24 – have to do with acts forbidden in modern Islam.
They deal with many aspects of noble human life: prohibiting such
acts as killing of the innocent, prisoners and emissaries (journalists included),
denying women and children their rights, the re-introduction of
slavery, torture, disfiguring the dead and
destroying graves, harming or mistreating believers of other religions of
the Scripture, starting armed insurrection, declaring caliphate“without consensus from all
Muslims,” as well as issuing fatwas (legal rulings,
interpretations of the Islamic law) without proper religious
education, mastery of the Arabic language, “oversimplify[ing]
Sharia matters” and even “ignoring the reality of
contemporary times.”

As the authors of the letter observe, all of those interdictions
have been ruthlessly violated by the leadership and members of
the Islamic State.

In particular, the document stresses the unprecedented number of
people executed by the Islamic State militants for their beliefs.

“You have killed many innocents who were neither combatants
nor armed, just because they disagree with your opinion,”
the letter said, denying the Islamic State the right to call the
faithful to jihad. “There is no such thing as offensive,
aggressive jihad just because people have different religions or
opinions.”

“Jihad is a noble concept in Islam,” told VICE News the
national director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
Nihad Awad. “It is the right to defend oneself and one's
country. But people cannot take it into their own hands. As an
act of aggression, it is a violation,” he said.

“They claim to be jihadists, but they are not. I urge
everyone not to refer to them as jihadists,” Awad added.

The letter specifically focused attention on POWs being executed
by the Islamic State in their thousands in Iraq and Syria.

“You have killed many prisoners,” the document states,
addressing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his men, “including the
1,700 captives at Camp Speicher in Tikrit in June, 2014; the 200
captives at the Sha'er gas field in July, 2014; the 700 captives
of the Sha'etat tribe in Deir el-Zor (600 of whom were unarmed
civilians); the 250 captives at the Tabqah air base in Al-Raqqah
in August, 2014; Kurdish and Lebanese soldiers, and many untold
others whom God knows. These are heinous war crimes,” the
address states.

The children who died in IS attacks or were used
in combat were added to the list of shameful IS deeds.

“In your schools some children are tortured and coerced into
doing your bidding and others are being executed,” the
letter says. “These are crimes against innocents who are so
young they are not even morally accountable.”

The letter also calls attention to frivolous handling of the holy
texts and intentionally-selective citation of certain passages in
order to legitimize atrocities perpetrated by the IS.

“It is not permissible to quote a verse, or part of a verse,
without thoroughly considering and comprehending everything that
the [Koran] and Hadith relate about that point,” the letter
notes.

“It is known that all religions forbid the killing of
emissaries,” the letter said. “Journalists — if they are
honest and of course not spies — are emissaries of truth, because
their job is to expose the truth to people in general.”

The slavery that returned to the Middle East with the rise of the
Islamic State was not ignored in the document either.

Despite Islam's consensus taking decision to abolish slavery over
a century ago, “Islamic State militants have captured women
from minority communities and forced them to marry fighters or
sold them into slavery.”

The most effective ideological critics of the IS should come from
within the Muslim community, shared Nihad Awad, who believes that
the open letter is “intended for a conservative
audience” and is “very convincing.”

“People should know that what ISIS is doing is not
Islam,” Muzammil Siddiqi, the chairman of the Fiqh Council
of North America, which facilitated publication of the letter,
told VICE News. “It's important that a large number of
scholars are speaking up and saying this is wrong.”